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c hapter 11
“I Will Not Let the Experience Be Taken Away
from Me”
Forms of Workers’ Self-Organization in the 1989–1990 Revolutionary
Transition in the gdr
Renate Hürtgen
One could suppose that especially within the field of the history of labour
and labour movements, the interaction between revolutions and changes in
labour relations would be a focus for research. There have certainly been im-
portant times when the study of revolutions has flourished, often connected
with the study of mass movements as part of a historiography with a left-
wing political orientation. At the same time, socio-historical research on la-
bour movements has also paid a great deal of attention to processes that took
place inside factories. However, these two historiographical developments
have remained somewhat separated from each other. Descriptions of the
history of revolutions mostly discuss their topics as political events; dealing
with political procedures and different phases of revolution, and examining
the ideas of the protagonists.1 Taking a look at the 1917 Russian revolution al-
lows us to recognize this tendency, as discussions concerning labour relations
during times of revolution have been made subordinate to discussions about
political events.2 Of course, a Marxist historiography would “know” that it is
not the thinkers and party or trade union leaders themselves who made the
1 A good example is the discussion about the role of the factory councils in the Russian Rev-
olution of 1917. These councils, founded after the February Revolution, are assumed to have
opened up anti-capitalist perspectives within this form of labour representation. Such eval-
uations, however, are only based on programmes, statutes or statements from the revolu-
tionary councils, in which the protagonists explicitly formulate their intentions and goals. To
determine the character of the workers’ councils either in Russia or other countries, it would
be necessary to distinguish between the self-identification of the revolutionaries and their
real practice, and to comprehend them as part of the revolutionary upheaval of old labour
relations. Such analysis has not been carried out to date.
2 For a criticism of this approach, see Renate Hürtgen, “Lesarten des roten Oktober”, http://
marx200.org/blog/perspektiven-auf-den-roten-oktober [19 May 2018].
© Renate Hürtgen, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004440395_013
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revolutions, yet they have nonetheless always remained the focus of inter-
est.3 Even if attention is paid to the demonstrating or striking revolutionary
masses, they often appear as a mere abstraction, or are remembered as po-
litical participants, leaders of strikes or members of a revolutionary council.
They are hardly ever described in their own living and working environment,
where the whole contradictory character of their thoughts and actions first
manifests itself.4
In a totally different way, while focusing on the everyday life of workers,
their culture and their lifestyle, many sociological and cultural history ap-
proaches to labour history detach the research agenda from the question
of the relationship between labour relations and revolution.5 Their field of
interest is not limited to the revolutionary consciousness of workers, to the
political parties they belong to and to their attitude in the class struggle; at-
tention is paid to the precise relations between the main protagonists within
the company. However, in this approach, the importance of class struggle and
of power disappear simultaneously. Labour relations are not described as re-
lations of rule, but are replaced by “persistent” reciprocal power relations.6 My
analysis of the factory processes of the 1989 democratic revolution in the gdr
that follows should be read as a passionate plea to unite these two directions
of labour history: not to consider the changes in political power separately
from the fights against the ruling labour regime, and to put the changes in fac-
tory power relations, their causes, and the nature and goals of the protagonists
into the overall context of social development. In other words, the aim should
be to observe the developments in factories, the learning processes that work-
ers themselves went through, and their particular experiences and behaviour,
without losing sight of the overall social context of power, class struggle and
exploitation.
3 This approach reduces the revolutionary changes of labour relations to legal contexts. Con-
trast this with the tendency apparent in some articles from the conference “Gewerkschaften
in revolutionären Zeiten –Europa 1917 bis 1923” on 11–12 October 2018, held in Berlin by the
Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
4 Minutes of Russian meetings that recorded the exact work of these boards were recently
published in German for the first time. Anita Friedetzky and Rainer Thomann, Aufstieg und
Fall der Arbeitermacht in Russland (Berlin: Die Buchmacherei, 2017), 509–634. This is manda-
tory reading for anyone examining the role of councils in the Russian revolution.
5 Cf. Peter Hübner, Christoph Kleßmann and Klaus Tenfelde, ed., Arbeiter im Staatssozial-
ismus. Ideologischer Anspruch und soziale Wirklichkeit (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna:
Böhlau, 2005).
6 Cf. Peter Hübner, Arbeiter und Technik in der DDR 1971 bis 1989. Zwischen Fordismus und digi-
taler Revolution (Bonn: Böhlau, 2014).
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1 The Factory Movements of 1989: An Unknown Side of the
Revolution
The memory of the democratic revolution in the German Democratic Repub-
lic (gdr) is a prime example of concentrating on political results and ignoring
what happened in companies, in particular the grassroots democratic process-
es.7 The prevailing official interpretation reduces the revolution to the fall of
the Honecker regime, the mass demonstrations and, first of all, to the fall of the
Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. The majority of the population –sometimes
against their better knowledge –accepts this. As a result, 9 November is cele-
brated as the peak and the end of the revolution, which then brought about
the unification of Germany. Although thousands of gdr citizens witnessed the
boom of autonomous employees’ initiatives on a scale never seen before, their
experience has been given limited space in the narrative of 1989–1990. A large
section of researchers investigating civil rights activists and opposition to the
gdr regime have found the main topic for their analyses in the attack on the
Ministry of State Security; the events in the factories of the gdr seem of little
interest, even today. The same can be said about the flood of publications con-
cerning the history of the revolution in the gdr written by both East and West
German historians, who since 1990 have preferred to deal with the old and the
new elite, as well as the collapse of social structures, the role of the party, the
state security apparatus and other institutions of power.
When grassroots actions are examined, this usually remains limited to the
mass demonstrations in the streets and squares.8 That does not mean devel-
opments at the factory level that contributed to the fall of the gdr have re-
mained completely unstudied. In fact, economic and business historians have
been very interested in the structural and personal changes in company man-
agement, and therefore have also dealt with events in the factories during
the revolution. This strand of literature, however, does not regard labour re-
lations as relations of rule, and the perspective is very different from that of
the workers who were destroying the prevailing structures. Consequently, this
research did not and does not offer much towards an understanding of the
7 Bernd Gehrke and Renate Hürtgen, ed. Der betriebliche Aufbruch im Herbst 1989. Die unbekan-
nte Seite der DDR-Revolution (Berlin: Bildungswerk Berlin der Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, 20012).
This book presents texts by eye witnesses and more than 120 original documents about the
transition in the factories. These form the main sources of information for the current chap-
ter. A second resource for original documents is http://www.ddr89.de/ [5 June 2019].
8 Jürgen Kädtler and Gisela Kottwitz, Betriebsräte zwischen Wende und Ende in der DDR (Ber-
lin: Zentralinstitut für Sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung der Freien Universität Berlin, 1990).
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role of workers and employees in the events of 1989.9 Some economic histo-
rians from the former gdr have justifiably criticized the historically unique
process of the destruction of the East German economy. However, their focus
has been on the needs and concerns of the former managers of factories and
industrial complexes, who saw themselves as being suppressed by the West-
ern elite. Since they consider the factory as a place of power only in the West,
and therefore not in the gdr, no revolutionary meaning is attached to the
initiatives of the workforce, which in the autumn of 1989 turned against the
factory leadership, directors of industrial complexes and trade union execu-
tives in the gdr.10
Although for very different reasons, many leftists from the West –together
with some German researchers of trade unions –have shared this somewhat
distrustful view of the grassroots movements in the factories in the fall of the
Berlin Wall. The former overlooked the anti-capitalist tendencies among the
gdr workforce and did not examine the demands for radical change that went
beyond immediate reforms. For the Western leftists who came into contact
with the East German factory committees in the autumn of 1989, the gdr
workers somehow resembled strangers, who were not expected to be revolu-
tionary at all. The election results of March 1990 seemed to confirm this atti-
tude. An evaluation of the gdr revolution as a revolution for “free time and
consumption” that was widespread in early literature, contributed to losing
sight of the sphere of production.11 No relevant revisions have been made to
this evaluation. The trade unions in the West also mostly failed to consider
the spontaneous movements in the factories in the gdr. They first showed
interest in grassroots participation in the summer of 1990, when partners were
needed for the first staff committees and factory council elections, as well as
for trade union units to be set up.12 Not all the trade union representatives tried
to find “unencumbered” people at the grassroots level; only those who did not
9 André Steiner, Von Plan zu Plan: Eine Wirtschaftsgeschichte der DDR (München: Deutsche
Verlags-Anstalt, 2004). Cf. Karin Lohr, “Management und Belegschaft im wirtschaftlichen
Wandel –Brüche und Kontinuitäten”, in Krisen, Kader, Kombinate. Kontinuität und Wan-
del in ostdeutschen Betrieben, ed. Martin Heidenreich (Berlin: Sigma, 1992), 159–172.
10 Jörg Roesler and Dagmar Semmelmann, Vom Kombinat zur Aktiengesellschaft.
Ostdeutsche Energiewirtschaft im Umbruch in den 1980er und 1990er Jahren (Bonn: Karl
Dietz Verlag, 2005).
11 Kädtler and Kottwitz, Betriebsräte.
12 Rainer Weinert and Franz- Otto Gilles, Der Zusammenbruch des Freien Deutschen
Gewerkschaftsbundes (FDGB). Zunehmender Entscheidungsdruck, institutionalisierte
Handlungsschwächung und Zerfall der hierarchischen Organisationsstruktur (Wiesbaden:
vs Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 1999).
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want to return to recruiting from the old gdr leadership and functionary team
(fdgb).
These attitudes rapidly reaffirmed the teleological notion that any demands
for the direct participation of labourers in management made during the rev-
olution of 1989 had been destined to fail from the start.13 This “teleologic real-
ism” not only took hold among those dealing with the revolutionary upheavals
in labour relations at the beginning of the 1990s, but very soon became extend-
ed to all attempts to take a slightly more social perspective on the future of the
gdr, which were decried as utopian.14
As a result of this combination of different perspectives, the role of the
workforce ended up as a marginal issue in study of the 1989 revolution.
However, this seems to have been changing to some extent in recent times.
Contemporary historians have rediscovered oppositional tendencies in the
Eastern Germany of the early 1990s, and have started to show an interest in
the resistance of workers against the Trust agency (Treuhandanstalt) and
government policy.15 Trade unions have also started to look more critically at
their history of unification and their less glamorous role in the construction
of the new labour relations in East Germany.16 The foundational meeting of
the “Initiative of the East German Staff Committees, Factory Councils and
Shop Stewards” against the mass dismissals of the Trust agency in Berlin in
1992 is one of the points of interest.17 The current chapter aims to contribute
to this turn by examining events in the factories of the gdr between Septem-
ber 1989 and February 1990, especially with regard to the process of factories’
transition. It also looks at the main protagonists who allowed the old power
structure in the factories to collapse, and at the demands for new forms of la-
bour relations that emerged in the process. The questions raised here include
13 Manfred Scharrer, Der Aufbau einer freien Gewerkschaft in der DDR 1989/90. ÖTV und
FDGB-Gewerkschaften im deutschen Einigungsprozess (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter,
2011), preface, 47–50.
14 Martin Jander, Formierung und Krise der DDR-Opposition: Die “Initiative für unabhängige
Gewerkschaften” –Dissidenten zwischen Demokratie und Romantik (Berlin: Akademie
Verlag, 1996).
15 The Trust agency was established by the gdr government. Originally it should save work-
ers’ rights to the factories but after the elections in March it was used to privatize the East
German enterprises.
16 Detlev Brunner, Michaela Kuhnhenne and Hartmut Simon, ed., Gewerkschaften im
deutschen Einheitsprozess: Möglichkeiten und Grenzen in Zeiten der Transformation
(Bielefeld: transcript, 2018).
17 https://geschichtevonuntenostwest.wordpress.com/soziale-kaempfe-in-ostdeutschland-
nach-1990/dokumentation-der-initiative-ostdeutscher-und-berliner-betriebsraete/ [19 May
2018].
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who these workers were and what motivated their activities. The chapter also
looks at interactions between the revolutionary events on the “street” and
those in the factories, at the ideas that were current among the grassroots ac-
tivists and at the question of why this phase of the transformation only lasted
for a few weeks. Lastly, it addresses the question of the connection between
the revolution and the changes in labour relations that took place in the gdr
after the Wende (the ‘turning point’, meaning the period between the Peaceful
Revolution in autumn 1989 and the elections for a democratic parliament in
March 1990).
2 The Crisis of the Political and Factory Power Structures
The pictures showing thousands of refugees from the gdr during the late sum-
mer of 1989 circulated around the world. Reports about the mass demonstra-
tions –not only in Leipzig, Dresden and Berlin, but also in numerous small
towns –leading to the downfall of both the central and the local state party, ap-
peared in the mass media. The dissatisfaction with the regime (that had been
building up for decades) was articulated in open protest. When the Hungari-
an government started to pull down the border fence to Austria in May 1989,
many gdr citizens tried to leave the country via this route. During the sum-
mer, they used the embassies or consulates of the Federal Republic in Hungary,
Prague, Warsaw and East Berlin for their flight. In the first half of the year,
nearly 50,000 people left the gdr in this way. By the end of 1989, the numbers
had risen to 230,000. One reason why the refugee movement continued during
the winter was that many citizens feared the border would be closed again at
some point. Even at the time of the elections in March 1990, many people were
still afraid that the old power structure might be re-established. On the other
hand, unlike the situation in June 1953, the protestors in 1989 were aware that
the Soviet Army was not expected to supress the uprising. The developments
in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev might have had a decisive influence on
the protests by gdr citizens in the early spring of 1989. Ignoring the “hardlin-
ers” within their own government, and in spite of the unpredictable danger of
a massive military blow against the demonstrators, the feeling grew that the
risks were worth taking. Within the space of just a few weeks, the party and
state structures fell apart. What looked like an implosion would never have
been successful without the pressure from the mass movements, although the
workers’ uprising in the autumn of 1989 was undoubtedly different from that in
June 1953 in the gdr. As a rule, the workers from the local factories went onto
the streets after closing time, demonstrating in their capacity as citizens. The
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first demonstrations often took place in a semi-public room of a church and
expanded from there into the city.
The developments of the 1970s can help us to understand the events at the
factories in the gdr in 1989, in particular the situation there in the summer
and autumn. Since the 1970s, the industrial landscape of the gdr was charac-
terized by huge factory units, with more than 200 industrial complexes, some
of them with over 20,000 employees. It was only at this stage that the gdr
assumed the form of a “workers’ society”. The factory was at the centre, where
overall, some eight million “employees” worked nine hours a day, from Mon-
day to Friday. Following the unsuccessful decentralization of the economy, the
power of middle management over the economy once again increased, in the
process also strengthening the position of the one-party state in the spheres of
production and distribution. This had complicated effects on the workforce.
On the one hand, through Honecker’s “Unity of Economic and Social Policy”,
the role of the factories became enhanced.18 On the other hand, the functions
of the party –as well as of the state security apparatus –were reinforced. In
fact, after the end of the 1960s, basically only the members of the Socialist
Unity Party of Germany (sed) could hold positions in the factory leadership,
including the post of foreman. This produced a factory management consis-
tently loyal to the state and subject to party discipline. It deeply influenced the
atmosphere in the factory, and produced a gap between the “top” and “bottom”,
called the “card line”, analogous to the “collar line”.19 The factory was among
the most thoroughly controlled places in the gdr, through the factory combat
groups; a paramilitary organization that had been set up following the workers’
uprising in 1953, with the aid of the local sed members in the factories and
through state security.20
The industrial landscape of the gdr in its final decade was characterized
by two contradictory developments, which in 1989 contributed significantly to
the course of events. First, the misguided economic policy led to a situation of
decline and disorganization. The complaints lodged with the party, the state
18 The concept of “Unity of Economic and Social Policy”, which ended with the sed’s eighth
party congress in 1971, was related to the era of Erich Honecker as leader of the party and
state president. He introduced a policy in which the consumer goods industry was meant
to have a more significant role than before.
19 The “collar line” distinguished blue-collar workers from the white-collar management.
In the gdr, this distinction went together with belonging to the all-defining sed. People
carrying a party membership card belonged to the “top”.
20 In the 1960s, the state security paid attention to the economy and the factories, and orga-
nized their labour structures according to the so-called production principle.
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leadership and the fdgb show a disastrous picture of collapsed factory roofs,
malfunctioning heating and broken furniture.21 A lack of tools together with
irregularities in the supply of raw materials made it impossible to maintain
continuity of the work flow. The machinery became outdated to the extent
that the proportion of obsolete equipment that was still operating had risen to
over 50 per cent in some sectors by 1988.22 It was not without good reason that
employees claimed the ruling economic and labour regime was responsible for
this misery. The maxim was to fulfil the plan at any costs, even through false
figures and reports. The factory leadership, consisting of the secretary of the
sed, the state commissioner and the leadership of the trade union, subordi-
nated the factory interests to party politics, and the employees had to bear the
consequences of this mismanagement.
Notwithstanding the problems described above, the gdr nevertheless be-
came a modern industrialized country with a qualified workforce. As a result
of an extensive qualification programme, particularly for women, the facto-
ries in the gdr had a higher proportion of skilled workers, technicians and
engineers than comparable factories in the West.23 The number of people
without qualifications was reduced to a negligibly low number, and while
the title “skilled worker” could often not compete with the traditional de-
grees of engineers, the self-confidence of the gdr employees grew because
of their qualifications. At the same time, the gap was growing between their
knowledge and capabilities on the one hand, and on the other, the opportu-
nities to make use of them. In the gdr of the 1980s, this resulted in the com-
mon phenomenon of over-qualification in the workplace. Technicians and
engineers complained that they were just “sitting around”, not being able to
use their knowledge, and that they were excluded from factory decisions.
One of the engineers explained in an interview that the head of the quality
control department had sent her to the junkyard to check if she could find a
missing spare part there: “It was then that I realized that it was all over with
the gdr”, she recalled. Another employee with a mechanical engineering
21 Peter Becker and Alf Lüdtke, ed., Akten. Eingaben. Schaufenster. Die DDR und ihre Texte:
Erkundungen zu Herrschaft und Alltag (Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 2015).
22 Renate Hürtgen, “Entwicklung in der Stagnation? Oder: Was ist so spannend am
Betriebsalltag der 1970er und 1980er Jahre in der DDR?” in Der Schein der Stabilität.
DDR-Betriebsalltag in der Ära Honecker, ed. Renate Hürtgen and Thomas Reichel (Berlin:
Metropolis, 2001), 28.
23 Ingrid Drexel and Barbara Giessmann, ed., Berufsgruppen im Transformationsprozess.
Ostdeutschlands Ingenieure, Meister, Techniker und Ökonomen zwischen Gestern und
Übermorgen (Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 1997).
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qualification had sat around in his office without any work assignments for
years.24
The gap between the increasing demands for high living and working stan-
dards, and the lack of the possibility to achieve them led to growing dissatisfac-
tion. Skilled workers suffered a loss of dignity due to the fact they were not able
to do real work, and that their knowledge and ability remained unused, while
the work they did do was not even adequately rewarded.25
3 Labour Relations as Power Relations
The eruption of protests in the gdr in 1989 was not only driven by the constant
shortage of goods and services and the lack of freedom to travel. The flood of
petitions and complaints beginning in the autumn of 1989 was soon joined by
the creation of grassroots groups of employees putting forward their demands,
which shows unmistakably that anger was also focussed on the prevailing
power relations in the factories.26
In order to recognize the character of labour relations in the final days of the
gdr, we have to take a brief look at the situation of the workers’ movement.
After the East German mass strike and workers’ protests of 17 June 1953 had
been subdued, no other similar actions took place for thirty-six years.27 The
suppression of this workers’ uprising also marked the downfall of autonomous
movements. From that time onwards, strikes, the right of association and oth-
er forms of organizing in the interests of workers were forbidden in practice.
The right to go on strike finally disappeared from the new constitution of
the gdr in 1968, whereas it had previously remained formally recognized.28
The representation of the workers’ interests against the state (that is, against
state companies) became the sole prerogative of state trade unions under the
auspices of the fdgb. These trade unions did not fight for higher wages and
24 Renate Hürtgen, Angestellt im VEB. Loyalitäten, Machtressourcen und soziale Lagen der
Industrieangestellten in der DDR (Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2009), 145–147.
25 Renate Hürtgen, “Von der Würde der Arbeiter im ´Arbeiterstaat` DDR oder Wo ist
die Arbeiterbewegung geblieben?” in Solidarität im Wandel der Zeiten. 150 Jahre
Gewerkschaften, ed. Willy Buschak (Essen: Klartext, 2016), 303–330.
26 Renate Hürtgen, Ausreise per Antrag: Der lange Weg nach drüben. Eine Studie über
Herrschaft und Alltag in der DDR-Provinz (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014).
27 Heidi Roth, Der 17. Juni 1953 in Sachsen (Köln: Ch. Links Verlag, 1999).
28 Renate Hürtgen, “Vom Streik zur individuellen Arbeitsverweigerung”, in Zwischen
Disziplinierung und Partizipation. Vertrauensleute des FDGB im DDR-Betrieb, ed. Renate
Hürtgen (Köln, Weimar and Wien: Böhlau, 2005), 255–270.
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better working conditions; their main task was to make sure that economic
plans were implemented and production was increased. Those who grew up
in the gdr and started working in the 1960s therefore did not know any col-
lective demonstrations, strikes, meetings or open discussion forums without
the participation of a representative of the state or a functionary of the party
(sed). When the revolutionary transition in the gdr reached the first factories
in the early autumn of 1989, the workers not only lacked any experience of an
independent collective movement, but also the facilities and media to build
up a counter-hegemonic public sphere. The attempt of the gdr workers and
employees to build up an autonomous grassroots representation should be ap-
preciated even more in light of the long years of supressed organizing culture,
and the lack of any personal experience in this regard.
The revolutionary initiatives in the factories started slightly later than the
protests in the streets. The demonstrators did not generally carry banners with
demands, and only in exceptional cases played a major role in the manifesta-
tions.29 One such exception was the speech by Heiner Müller at the Alexan-
derplatz in Berlin on 4 November 1989.30 Müller called for the formation of the
Initiative for an Independent Trade Union Movement (iug). The speech began
with a challenge to the fdgb for not siding with the workers. At the end of the
speech, he called on those present not to wait for renewal from “the top down”,
but to take matters into their own hands by organizing the representation of
their own interests.31 This spirit of grassroots initiative embraced the whole of
East German society in the autumn of 1989. However, while the speakers at the
Alexanderplatz on 4 November focused on the unity of all the citizens, the call
for the iug expressed an idea that seemed to have little place in the general
euphoria of the transition. In fact, the call stressed that employees in the gdr
would have to continue the fight for their rights after the downfall of the party
state. It argued that the following years would be no “bed of roses”. Considering
the desolate state of the economy, it was to be expected that the workers would
bear the burden of the transition.
The speech by Heiner Müller was received without much enthusiasm by
the functionaries of the fdgb, and with some surprise by most of the workers
29 Bernd Lindner, Die demokratische Revolution in der DDR 1989/90 (Bonn: Bundeszentrale
für politische Bildung, 2001), 79, 87, 112–113.
30 Renate Hürtgen, “Wie Heiner Müller am 4. November 1989 zu seiner Rede auf dem
Berliner Alexanderplatz kam”, in Der betriebliche Aufbruch, ed. Gehrke and Hürtgen,
165–166.
31 Aufruf der Initiative für unabhängige Gewerkschaften, http://www.ddr89.de/iug/aufruf.
html [9 July 2019]. Also see the translation in the appendix.
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via free accessWorkers’ self-organization in the 1989-1990 transition 313
and employees from the factories in Berlin. However, similar calls for the es-
tablishment of independent representation within the factories and trade
unions were made very early, and not only in Berlin. On 16 October 1989, one
appeal read:
Knowing that the Free German Trade Union League does not safeguard
the interests of the majority of the employees of the gdr, and that in-
stead of them, it acknowledges the sed as allied partner, we, the workers
of veb Geräte and Reglerwerke “Wilhelm Pieck” Teltow have decided to
resign from the fdgb and to establish the Independent Factory Trade
Union “Reform”.32
According to the meticulous records of the state security, similar activities and
calls were made elsewhere that October, for example at the three state-owned
factories (veb) in Erfurt.33 Only few of these calls were made at public demon-
strations. Speaking in front of the Church of the Cross in Dresden on 17 Octo-
ber 1989, a member of the group of young workers from the Radebeul shoe and
leather factory introduced among other matters the proposal that “the facto-
ry leadership will be elected”.34 All of these initiatives took place without the
participants knowing of each other’s existence, except for the few instances
that reached West German radio or television. The media were still state –and
therefore sed –owned and controlled at the time, which made communicat-
ing and disseminating information about grassroots actions in the factories ex-
tremely difficult. At the demonstrations, the question of factory organization
remained a marginal topic. Demands for the freedom of assembly, freedom of
the press and freedom to travel dominated the movement.
Of all the forms of resistance against the prevailing labour relations, the
mass exits from the fdgb involved numerically the most people. The trade
unions experienced a rapid decrease in their membership, as trade union
members resigned individually or in groups, and formulated calls for with-
drawal to the factory trade union bodies. These calls were often connected
with criticisms against the fdgb: “A trade union that allows such great social
injustice in this state is not our trade union. As a young man, one already fears
32 Call by the independent trade union “Reform”, http://www.ddr89.de/betriebe/GRW7.
html [9 July 2019].
33 Reports about special actions in the district of Erfurt, sapmo BArch DY 34/13268, BV des
fdgb, Abteilung Organisation.
34 “Call in Front of the Cross Church, 17 October 1989”, in Der betriebliche Aufbruch, ed.
Gehrke and Hürtgen, 349.
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to become a pensioner. The pension increase is a joke”.35 In October 1989, nu-
merous “open letters” were sent to “Dear Colleague Harry Tisch” –the leader
of the fdgb at the time –with requests to express his opinion about the sit-
uation in the country, and to finally start a dialogue with the members. The
privileges given to functionaries of the fdgb (which became widely known in
November 1989) led to a new wave of resignations, and on 2 November, Harry
Tisch resigned. The national board of the fdgb refused to play any role in the
transition from then on; remaining just as the leaders of the individual trade
unions. The whole trade union apparatus was shocked, unable to operate with-
out orders coming “from the top”. The changes in labour relations that took
place in 1989–1990 were exclusively driven by protagonists within the factories.
There was active participation by shop stewards, and in exceptional cases also
by functionaries of the trade union branches and members of the sed. How-
ever, in general, key roles were played by workers and employees with no party
affiliation and outside managerial positions.
4 The End of the Old Labour Relations
The transition in the gdr factories accelerated after the street protests had
succeeded in destabilizing the political structure. On 5 November, only a day
after the large demonstration in Berlin, the whole politburo of the sed re-
signed; a move that was mirrored by party and state functionaries in provincial
towns.36 In the meantime, a social democratic party (sdp) and various civil
rights organizations were formed, among them “New Forum”, and fought for
official approval.37 The opening of the border on 9 November put an end to
the demonstrators’ week-long fight to change the travel law. It was only the
successful demonstrations in October 1989, the opening of the border on 9 No-
vember, and above all, the protection the new organizations and parties pro-
vided that encouraged the emergence of demands at the factory level. This
delay was not without good cause. As described above, the factories in the gdr
35 “Notice of withdrawal”, in Der betriebliche Aufbruch, ed. Gehrke and Hürtgen, 331.
36 Renate Hürtgen, “Das Wunder von Halberstadt. Die demokratische Revolution in der
Provinz”, in Herbst 1989 in der DDR-Provinz. Fallbeispiele: Pritzwalk, Halberstadt und
Gotha, ed. Hele Panke e.V. (Berlin: Helle Panke e.V. –Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Berlin,
2015), 32–49.
37 Christel Degen, Politikvorstellung und Biografie: Die Bürgerbewegung Neues Forum auf
der Suche nach der kommunikativen Demokratie Forschung Politik (Opladen: Leske &
Budrich, 2000).
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were tightly controlled places. Those people who stood up to the factory man-
agement in public lacked the type of protection provided by the anonymity
of the street. Significantly, the pioneers of the transition in the factories often
included people who joined a new opposition group in October or November
and then also attempted to found, for example, a “New Forum” group in their
own factory. This provided them with political protection, made paper and the
use of a copying machine accessible to them and enabled them to build up an
alternative information structure that could be used for the factory actions.38
The lack of the means of communication and of public spaces in which to
organize constituted further problems for those who wanted to transfer the
“spirit of the street” into the factory. Different later accounts recall how activ-
ists had made use of the bulletin boards or the blackboards in factory corridors
to post a piece of paper with their own message, often to be quickly removed
by the party secretary.39 The “fight around the bulletin board” was symbolic of
the fight for publicity within the factories during the autumn of 1989. The trade
union meetings organized independently by members and union representa-
tives were also an example of this. The new, previously totally unknown feeling
of power was expressed in demands to the factory management to publicly
account for the state of the factory, and to introduce Glasnost and Perestroika
in the workplaces.
The crucial demands, which directly questioned the prevailing power rela-
tions, were aimed at disbanding the factory combat teams and the sed struc-
tures, as well as their so-called mass organizations. The slogans were: “Party
and state security, out of the factories! Break the combat teams! Stop social-
ist competition!” The latter demand above all delegitimized the trade unions
at the factories; the same unions that in the past had organized performance
competitions in order to increase production. In some of the factories, workers
or their representatives organized explicit votes to withdraw their trust from
these bodies. The “explanation” sent early November 1989 by the employees
of veb Rationalisierungsmittelbau Zwickau to the factory director and the
38 “Factory groups” were founded within the New Forum and United Left. With regard
to the connection between the new civil rights movement and the factory activists in
1989–1990, see Wilfried Wilkens-Friedrich, Die Beziehungen zwischen Neuem Forum und
Gewerkschaften am Beispiel Berlins. Eine Fallstudie zum Spannungsverhältnis von neuen
und alten sozialen Bewegungen (Berlin: Zentralinstitut für Sozialwissenschaftliche
Forschung der Freien Universität Berlin, 1994); Bernd Gehrke, “Demokratiebewegung und
Betrieb in der ‘Wende’ 1989. Plädoyer für einen längst fälligen Perspektivwechsel”, in Der
betriebliche Aufbruch, ed. Gehrke and Hürtgen, 204–246.
39 “Also, die Hauptunruhen im Hauptwerk waren Wandzeitungen”, News from the TV-
electronics factory in Berlin, in Der Betriebliche Aufbruch, ed. Gehrke and Hürtgen, 68.
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management of the complex included a demand for the text to be published
in the company newsletter, which at that time was still firmly controlled by the
party. A group of co-workers set up a grassroots group of the “New Forum” in
their factory and with great self-assurance made suggestions for production,
and even made their demands complete with a precise schedule containing
deadlines to be complied with. In the event of failure to comply, they threat-
ened a warning strike.40
However, neither the fall of Erich Honecker in October nor the resignation
of his successor Egon Krenz in December 1989 could fully eliminate the old
power relations, and by January 1990, the sed appeared even stronger. In many
of the factories, the old managers continued their activities without interrup-
tion, and the Ministry of State Security was not disbanded, but instead turned
into the Office for National Security by the Modrow government. A strike wave
organized independently from the state-led trade unions swept the country
between October 1989 and January 1990, in which the industrialized south of
the gdr played a notable role.41 Employees partly returned to the old tradi-
tions of the workers’ movement, and partly used uncommon forms of action
such as the occupation of factories, hunger strikes or road blockades. Demands
for eliminating the old work regime and the existing political power structure
went hand in hand.
Changes in the balance of power within the factories started to take place.
The factory combat groups disintegrated, and the structures of the sed, the
Free German Youth (fdj) and the German Soviet Friendship disappeared.
Their former offices remained empty or were closed. In some of the facto-
ries, the workers’ representatives even dismissed the factory directors. Cadres,
party secretaries and other members of the management left their positions;
sometimes silently, sometimes under protest. For the workforce of the gdr,
this process gave rise to forms of self-empowerment only typical at times of
revolutions. When the protagonists of the factory transition met a decade af-
ter the autumn of 1989, they referred to that time –apart from the realistic
evaluation that in the end they could not accomplish all their revolutionary
objectives –as the time of “walking upright”, and as a determining moment in
their lives. There was unfortunately not much time left for the gdr workers for
this kind of experience, as Gerd S., at the time a turner at the company Ratio-
nalisierungsbau Karl-Marx-Stadt and a founding member of the Basisforum
40 “Statement of the New Forum at the Rationalisationsbau works, in manuscript, no date
(early November 1989)”, in Der betriebliche Aufbruch, ed. Gehrke and Hürtgen, 358.
41 Lindner, Die demokratische Revolution, 92.
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Rationalisierungsbau of the New Forum, remembers: “That was a short time
when we had relatively a lot, yes, a lot of power. Very different from today”.42
The newly founded workers’ organizations were surprised that the compa-
ny management often accepted negotiations with them so readily. One expla-
nation was that “this turmoil itself paralysed them in a way”.43 Nevertheless,
there were old –as well as new –directors in a number of factories who seized
the opportunities to adapt to market conditions. A joint-venture agreement
released by the Modrow government provided the legal basis for negotiations
with Western companies, and the first wave of staff dismissals soon started. On
22 December 1989, the director of the Elektroapparate Werke Treptow Com-
pany announced the closure of complete factory departments. An announce-
ment at the company veb Bergmann-Borsig highlighted the risky situation
that new grassroots initiatives faced:
On 17 and 18 January there will be negotiations with Western partners
about a joint venture, holding or other forms of cooperation. Chief ex-
ecutive D. and his deputy A. have stubbornly remained silent about their
plans and intentions so far. We need to act immediately. It may happen
that entire units of our factory will be closed down or liquidated.44
5 Towards New Representative Structures?
Only after new groups and initiatives had been established inside and outside
the factories, and “round tables” had been set up everywhere, did a lively dis-
cussion erupt about the aims and strategy for the transition. For a few weeks,
thousands of citizens were involved in considering a democratically constitut-
ed gdr, in the process advancing the most varied collection of approaches.45
42 “Minutes of the conference of the Bildungswerk Berlin of the Heinrich Böll Foundation,
27 November 1999”, in Der betrieblicher Aufbruch, ed. Gehrke and Hürtgen, 52.
43 “Minutes of the conference of the Bildungswerk Berlin of the Heinrich Böll Foundation,
27 November 1999”, in Der betrieblicher Aufbruch, ed. Gehrke and Hürtgen, 48.
44 “Proclamation to found a provisory factory council at the VEB Bergmann-Borsig”, in Der
betriebliche Aufbruch, ed. Gehrke and Hürtgen, 420. Bold type and anonymization in the
original.
45 The draft of a new work constitution, which was presented in the last Volkskammer (peo-
ple’s chamber) of the gdr in February 1990, made an especially far-reaching contribution.
Stiftung Haus der Demokratie und Menschenrechte, ed., “Verfassungsentwurf des Runden
Tisches, 1990”: The result of the political self-determination in the GDR from the autumn of
1989 till the election on 18 March 1990 (2nd edition, Berlin: Haus der Demokratie, 2014).
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A wider learning curve began, because “nobody had any idea about democra-
cy, not in the factory anyway”, as Ewald S. summed up the situation in retro-
spect.46 An active minority became engaged in changing the power relations
in the factories, and only a segment of them became members of the new po-
litical, economic and trade union elites after the transitional period.47
In order to ensure their legitimacy, the mostly small groups of four or five
colleagues who took the initiative to accept the challenge –and in order to be
authorized to act –collected signatures for their petitions or called for elec-
tions. Others established themselves simply as a “workers’ council”, “factory
council”, “institution council”, “independent trade union group”, “working com-
mittee” or “basis group”, in advance of the organization of proper elections.
Terms such as “provisory factory council” describe the temporary nature of
these boards. In addition, the founding of “round tables” in the factories tes-
tified to the existing power vacuum. As of December 1989, such round tables
existed in Berlin, where delegates of the sed and other parties, the fdgb and
the church could meet members of the newly founded civil rights groups.48
In addition to such initiatives, which were independent of the fdgb, new
elections for the factory trade union organizations started at the end of No-
vember. In many cases, the chair of the union branch was removed; in some
of the factories they resigned of their own volition. The initiators were often
whole trade union groups and –surprisingly –the shop stewards. The latter
is remarkable, because during the gdr era, shop stewards were not strongly
connected with fighting for workers’ rights.49 The activity of the shop stewards,
46 “Minutes of the conference of the Bildungswerk Berlin of the Heinrich Böll Foundation,
27 November 1999”, in Der betriebliche Aufbruch, ed. Gehrke and Hürtgen, 36.
47 There is no extensive examination of who from the Eastern trade unions, and to what
extent, took over any positions in the Western trade unions and if they were function-
aries in the fdgb. Some biographical reports show that former functionaries were pri-
marily involved, but less so the participants from the period of the grassroots upheaval.
Cf. Detlev Brunner and Christian Hall, Revolution, Umbruch, Neuaufbau. Erinnerungen
gewerkschaftlicher Zeitzeugen der DDR (Berlin-Brandeburg: Bebra Verlag, 2014); Larissa
Klinzing, “Zwischen Anpassung und Öffnung. Gewerkschaftsstrukturen im beigetre-
tenen Teil Deutschlands”, in Politische Strukturen im Umbruch, ed. Hiltrud Naßmacher
et al. (Berlin, 1994), 155–180; Joerg Roesler and Dagmar Semmelmann, Vom Kombinat zur
Aktiengesellschaft: Ostdeutsche Energiewirtschaft im Umbruch in den 1980er und 1990er
Jahren (Bonn: Karl Dietz Verlag, 2005).
48 Uwe Thaysen, Der Runde Tisch. Oder: Wo blieb das Volk? Der Weg der DDR in die Demokratie
(Opladen: vs Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 1990).
49 Renate Hürtgen, “Vertrauensleute des FDGB in den siebziger und achtziger Jahren.
Funktionslos im großen Funktionärsstaat DDR?” in Vom Funktionieren der Funktionäre.
Politische Interessenvertretung und gesellschaftliche Integration in Deutschland nach 1933,
ed. Till Kössler and Helke Stadtland (Essen: Klartext, 2004), 157–178.
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via free accessWorkers’ self-organization in the 1989-1990 transition 319
without any orders from the fdgb or the individual trade union branch offi-
cials, should not be confused with the reform movements within the fdgb.
No research has been carried out to date that can give a more complete view
of the profile of the main protagonists in the factory movement. According to
my own impressions as an eyewitness, which are supported by the fragmented
literature that exists, the key players were employees with technical or eco-
nomic qualifications, but who did not hold management positions. The docu-
ments also show the presence of skilled manual workers among the initiators.
It seems that the latter were more strongly represented in the initiatives aimed
at the renewal of trade unions, whereas the participation of the former group
was greater in the foundation of factory councils.
It is almost impossible to find a common structure in the movement as it
took shape in different factories. In some, a newly elected factory trade union
leadership, a factory council and an independent trade union group operat-
ed side by side for a few weeks.50 However, by November 1989 it had already
become clear that despite the differences in their names, many of these ini-
tiatives reflected similar demands for workers’ involvement in running the fac-
tories. For example, the announcement made by a trade union called “Reform”
included the demand for “the participation of trade unions in factory manage-
ment”.51
A more far-reaching programme for changing the form of workers’ represen-
tation was put forward by the iug,52 which worked out a statute at the end of
December.53 It left open the question of whether the independent trade union
should be organized on a sectoral, company or professional basis. However,
the draft statute clearly outlined the demand to remove the full-time trade
union bureaucracy and to replace it with elected shop stewards. Ideas put for-
ward by the iug about reducing the number of full-time functionaries, direct
election of workers’ representatives, transparency, the right to strike and the
50 “E.g. at the company Berliner Werk für Fernsehelektronik (wf)”, in Der betriebliche
Aufbruch, ed. Gehrke and Hürtgen, 64.
51 “Call for the Independent Trade Union ‘Reform’ in veb Geräte-und Reglerwerk (grw)
Teltow for the Foundation of Independent Trade Unions, 16 October 1989”, in Der betrie-
bliche Aufbruch, ed. Gehrke and Hürtgen, 342.
52 “Tasks and rights of works councils, basis for discussion of the content of a works con-
stitution law, on the occasion of the 1st works council conference of the gdr, 31 January
1989”, in Der betriebliche Aufbruch, ed. Gehrke and Hürtgen, 518.
53 “Statute draft (1990)”, in “Now there are initivative people and one should invite them all
to the same table”, Die Initiative für unabhängige Gewerkschaften (IUG) 1989 bis 1990,
Darstellung und Dokumente, ed. Leonore Ansorg and Renate Hürtgen (Berlin: fu Berlin,
1990), 79–83.
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right of association were included in the programmes of other independent
trade unions.54 The unpopularity of the old fdgb gave a decisive impetus for
these initiatives, because nobody had any trust in its renewal, and the prepara-
tions for an extraordinary fdgb congress at the end of January were similarly
viewed with mistrust.
6 Beyond 1989
By the beginning of 1990, much had changed for the grassroots movements in
the factories. The trend to form new advocacy groups had been replaced by at-
tempts to build factory councils comparable with similar representative bodies
in Western companies. Groups that had called themselves “independent trade
unions” back in October and November 1989, changed their names to “proviso-
ry factory councils”. There were attempts to build inter-company networks out
of the hundreds of grassroots initiatives in individual factories. On 31 January
1990, a national meeting of Independent Trade Union Initiatives and –on the
same day –a meeting of factory councils took place, with over 80 factories
represented in each of these meetings. In December 1989 there had already
been a proposal to create a “Council of Employees”. None of these proposals
were successful.55 It is true that even in January 1990, state security attempted
to hinder such networking. However, this is not sufficient to explain the failure
to build a national movement out of the individual factory initiatives.
For an explanation, it is necessary to look at the character of the revolu-
tionary transition in the gdr, which –as mentioned before –was neither a
workers’ uprising nor something that started in the factories. The contribu-
tion of the factory movement remained focused on disrupting the party dic-
tatorship’s monopolistic structures in the factories themselves, and through
this, the destruction of the old work regime. A more ambitious programme
was never on the agenda. The character of the new citizens’ movements of the
autumn of 1989 also contributed to this. Factory or trade union issues were
never a prime concern for the New Forum,56 which also never had the aim of
54 “Open letter of the brigade Maintenance-Tiefbau”, in Der betriebliche Aufbruch, ed. Gehrke
and Hürtgen, 350–354.
55 A representative of the United Leftists (vl) summarized in 1999, that the demand for
“workers’ control was not included in the agenda of the people concerned”, in Der betrie-
bliche Aufbruch, ed. Gehrke and Hürtgen, 110.
56 This is confirmed by the absence of such issues in the founding call for New Forum,
https://www.hdg.de/lemo/bestand/objekt/dokument-aufbruch-89.html [10 July 2019].
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uniting the demands of the factories and those of the “street” by means of a
general strike.57 Lastly, the popularity of the West German model was also a
reason to aim for more limited forms of factory representation. From the gdr
employees’ point of view, West German labour relations provided a solid and
extremely effective basis for the improvement of the quality of work and life.
Despite this, however, the factory grassroots initiatives did not simply prove
to be replicas of the Work Constitutional Act that regulated workers’ repre-
sentation in West German factories. They demanded more far-reaching rights
related to factory management, as can be established from the documents re-
lating to these initiatives. They included demands for co-determination “con-
cerning any issues of factory development”, “in any structural questions” and
“in any ownership question”, as the programme of the factory council of Funk-
werk Köpenick stated.58 The Council of the Employees in Karl-Marx-Stadt
demanded “involvement in every issue concerning cadre politics”, as well as
“in the production planning, the execution of production, investment, sales,
furthermore the fields of research and development”.59 Other boards claimed
veto rights over personnel issues and matters of corporate strategy, or gave a
future factory council far-reaching rights regarding the appointment of man-
agers.60 Even many groups that did not describe their prerogatives in similarly
far-reaching terms took it for granted that factory councils should have a say in
the organization of factory production and the distribution of profits. How in-
dignant they were when a few months later they learned what strict limits the
Federal German Work Constitution Act would impose on the factory councils.
The focus on workers’ participation in management functions from the out-
set involved the risk that trying to work in the best interests of the employ-
ees could turn into an aspiration to become part of the management. Some of
the demands for participation were indeed not based on the vision of a trade
unionist, conflict-oriented type of representation of the employees in the lead-
ership of the enterprise. This was the case for instance with the “institute coun-
cil” at the centre of the scientific equipment engineering company (Zentrum
57 Bernd Gehrke, “Die ‘Wende’-Streiks: A first draft”, in Der betriebliche Aufbruch, ed. Gehrke
and Hürtgen, 247–270.
58 “Work programme of the company veb Funkwerk Köpenick, factory unit Dubendorf,
o. D. (January 1990)”, in Der betriebliche Aufbruch, ed. Gehrke and Hürtgen, 432–433. See
the annex.
59 “Responsibilities and structures of the ‘Council of the Employees’ in Karl-Marx-Stadt, 22
December 1989”, in Der betriebliche Aufbruch, 397, ed. Gehrke and Hürtgen, http://www.
ddr89.de/betriebe/RDW3.html [10 July 2019].
60 “First Factory in the GDR on the works council’s activites of VEB Schwertransport Leipzig,
29 December 1989”, in Der betriebliche Aufbruch, ed. Gehrke and Hürtgen, 402.
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